New York|City to Close or Merge 9 Schools That Were in Support Program

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City to Close or Merge 9 Schools That Were in Support Program

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The city plans to close Junior High School 145 Arturo Toscanini, on Teller Avenue in the Bronx. In the 2015-16 school year, fewer than 10 percent of its students passed state exams in reading and math.CreditCreditDavid Dee Delgado for The New York Times

The city’s Education Department plans to close or merge nine schools next year that are part of its high-profile turnaround initiative, among a group of 22 schools to be closed or merged, according to a document obtained by The New York Times.

Mayor Bill de Blasio came into office saying that unlike his predecessor Michael R. Bloomberg, he would support struggling schools rather than close them, and he initiated the Renewal program in 2014 to offer extra money and services for 94 of the city’s lowest-performing schools.

“We reject the notion of giving up on any of our schools,” Mr. de Blasio said at the time.

Instead, he said, the city would infuse the schools in the program with resources, including coaches to help teachers improve their practices, new staff members to tackle problems like attendance, and social services like dental clinics or counseling. He said his administration might still end up closing schools, but he suggested that most schools would be given three years to improve. The program is now halfway through its third year.

The department assigned each school a set of benchmarks in areas like attendance, graduation rate and, for elementary and middle schools, performance on state reading and math exams. But the schools have shown uneven progress. Eight schools in the program met all of their targets last year, while four schools met none, and 17 others met only one or two out of six or seven targets. Many schools in the program have also seen their enrollment decline as families shun schools labeled failing.

The city previously decided to close or merge eight Renewal schools, so the latest round of closings will bring to 17 the number of schools in the program that will no longer be operating, at least as before.

Six of the schools will be closed entirely: Junior High School 162 Lola Rodriguez de Tio, which had been singled out by the state as persistently failing, and whose closing was previously announced; Leadership Institute, a high school; Junior High School 145 Arturo Toscanini; and Monroe Academy for Visual Arts and Design, all in the Bronx; and Middle School 584 and the Essence School, also a middle school, in Brooklyn.

The schools to be closed are all low-performing, to be sure. In the 2015-16 school year, only 8 percent of the students at J.H.S. 145 passed the state reading tests, and only 3 percent passed the state’s math tests. Even so, it is not clear that they are necessarily the worst among the schools in the program. All of the six schools met at least one of the goals assigned by the city last year. Some are being closed for low enrollment as well.

The three schools in the program to be merged are the Young Scholars Academy of the Bronx, a middle school; Frederick Douglass Academy IV, a high school in Brooklyn; and Automotive High School in Brooklyn. All three schools already share their buildings with the schools they are being merged into, which are not in the Renewal program.

The city is also proposing to merge five other pairs of schools, none of which are in the Renewal program, but many of which have struggled with academic achievement and enrollment.

The Education Department declined to comment on the decision to close or merge the schools.

The Bloomberg administration closed many large schools to start new, small ones. Studies have found that many small schools had positive effects on graduation rates and college enrollment. But not all the small schools were successful. The current city schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, has shown a preference for large schools and has said that some schools were too small to be sustainable.

All of the closings and mergers will have to be approved by the Panel for Educational Policy, a citywide body.

Aaron Pallas, a professor of sociology and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, said, “The fact that the city thinks that it needs to do this for six out of the roughly 80 or so left suggests that things are not going as well as they’d like.”

At the same time, he said, “If these mergers and closures result in new schools that have a new kind of energy, perhaps different staff, perhaps a different culture, that may be better than trying to continue turning around schools that have been struggling for a very long time.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: City to Close or Merge 9 Schools That Are in Program Offering Extra Help. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe